


promises to keep (and miles to go before I sleep)

by harringroveheart



Series: in dreaming [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy Hargrove POV, Dark fic, Emotional Hurt and Not Comfort, Ficlet, M/M, Mindflaying, Post Season 3, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 01:17:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19713370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harringroveheart/pseuds/harringroveheart
Summary: Run, Max, he thinks, with everything that’s left of him. But also. Just faintly:Help me.





	promises to keep (and miles to go before I sleep)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know, guys. I was listening to a lot of Max Richter post-season 3 and this is my sad-wanky-poetry way of dealing with my feelings. It contains SPOILERS.

Run, he thinks— _Billy_ , thinks, in the parking lot of the Starcourt Mall.

Run.

If he could, he would.

He puts his foot on the gas, the engine thudding underneath him, growling, vibrating in his bones: a threat and a warning.

Max looks scared. She doesn’t scare easy but that’s how she looks. He can’t see that far—(can he?)—but he’s looking at the ashy pallor of her, the whites of her eyes. It’s hard to remember now. Who she is.

Run, Max, he thinks, with everything that’s left of him.

But also, just faintly.

_Help me._

***

Help me. Like the quietest voice in a crowd.

He doesn’t deserve it.

The words are the sounds of his fists against some other kid’s cheek. The sound he made when his dad threw him into the side table and he lost time. His fists on Steve Harrington; the wet sound he made when Billy hit him when he was gone already. The sound of his mouth smacked open under Billy’s knuckles and the feel of it too.

He understands that she doesn’t hear. He doesn’t care, not really. It’s so cold, where he is, and he doesn’t want her here.

But he’s so scared too. And so lost.

It’s a monster, Max, he thinks, foot on the pedal, knuckles bulging white on the steering wheel. The world rends apart on the sound of the car roaring, the world narrowing and coming to the fore.

I knew, he thinks. I knew I was a monster, but I’m not this, Max. I’m not. Please.

 _Please_.

Please, believe me.

***

He learned it early: no one is coming to rescue you.

It was just—

A childish hope. Something he should have stomped on like a weed. Like all those nights under his bed, on the threadbare carpet full of ash, curled up around the phone, pathetic, snotty; waiting. 

No one comes. Not for Billy.

***

“I’m sorry,” he says, and maybe he means it. 

Is he dying? Max is so far away and so grown up, all of a sudden. Such beautiful red hair and such a serious face.

The mall is kind of beautiful too. And if he had his time again, he would go to the food court, to get ice cream and to see Harrington squirm, and to see him in the sailor suit, like all the girls in Hawkins talk about.

 _God_. God, it hurts so much to be good. He wishes he’d been bad and been wrong and taken what he wanted instead of being what was strong. He wishes he’d bitten his lip clean through and not cried when Neil beat him the first time—with a belt, and he wishes he’d said something to Tommy H, too, when he asked him, You here to shake things up? Take on King Steve? He wishes he’d said no.

No, I want to breathe. No, I want to live like you do, right in my skin. And I want to tear out of here one day with all of it in the rearview mirror, and a pretty boy to look at in the passenger seat who I maybe sometimes let pick the music, and the smell of gasoline and a summer sky ahead.

But he didn’t and he doesn’t. And he won’t get a chance to now—he’s dying.

He’s the bad guy.

He dies.

***

It hurt so bad the first time; he screamed so hard and no one came. Don’t be a pussy, his dad always says, and he’s trying so hard not to be but it’s—

Inside him. It—

Takes over so fast. He’s always been such a fighter but there’s no fight in him for this.

What do you want, he screams, the whole world turned upside down and rank with the smell of fear, his body raw all over with adrenaline, his brain shrieking, turning over and over like a starter motor failing to catch, the high whine of panic— _wake up, wake up, wake up_ , _wake **up**. _

_What do you want_ , it asks.

It’s slick, heavy, overwhelming. It’s in his throat, behind his eyes.

_What do you want, Billy?_

_Show me._

***

“You okay, in there, Hargrove?” Harrington asks. He smooths a hand over Billy’s forehead, threads fingers into his hair until he has his attention. “Thought I’d lost you for a second.”

They’re in the food court bathrooms; the color makes him dizzy, hurts his eyes.

“What were you saying?”

_Something about colleges…_

“I was asking you if you thought it was a good idea: me staying on for another year until you finish school.”

Billy smirks, remembering he has hands with which to touch. He sneaks his fingers into the band at the back of those ridiculous uniform shorts. Harrington gasps, looking around nervously as the sound echoes off the tiles. It’s the middle of the day but the bathroom is empty. Billy knows without needing to look.

“You gonna save up? Buy me a nice big house in Loch Nora with all that ice-cream money, baby?”

Harrington squirms, cheeks turning rosy. “I just…don’t want to leave you, okay? You don’t have to be a dick about it.”

“That’s kind of my default,” Billy says, a little distracted by the way Harrington is grinding against him just slightly, his hips moving into Billy’s hands even as he gets his arms up between them, pushing Billy back.

“Got to get back to my shift,” he says, breathy and annoyed.

“You free later?” Billy asks, because he’s hopeless.

“Yeah,” Harrington says, and kisses him, sharp and nasty, pinching Billy’s bottom lip between his teeth so hard it makes his eyes water. He backs out of the stall looking cocky as hell, winking even as Billy rubs a hand over his smarting mouth. “Come find me, okay?”

Of course. Always. Of course, he will.

***

The radio is playing his favorite song; perfect timing. Max is mortified. She reaches over to change it but he slaps her hand away. They’re taking the same road they drove into Hawkins on, behind the U-Haul and Neil’s truck. Back then the drive had been silent—too sick on the taste of his own tears down the back of his throat. But it’s different now. They’re happy. And he can usually find metal on any station. 

“Ugh, why do you always have to listen to this.”

“Can’t help it if they’re playing my song, Max,” he says, cranking the volume, tapping out the shred of the guitar on the wheel only to rile her up.

The countryside flies past his window—yellow, green, blue. Trees, fields, power lines.

“Where are we going?”

Dumb question.

Wherever they want.

“Wherever your heart desires, shitbird,” he says. “Sinclair can even come too.”

She rolls her eyes. “As if he’d get in the car with you. You drive like a psycho.” But she says, “Let’s go to the pool.”

“Good idea,” he says. Maybe today’s the day he’ll get to practice mouth-to-mouth on Harrington.

He turns the car around sharply, riding up on the shoulder and spraying dirt in their wake.

The drive to the pool is straightforward: the turn off for the lake, the Fair Mart, more trees, the—

He slams on the brakes.

“What the hell, Billy?”

He—

Doesn’t know. It’s just. There’s nothing there.

He stares at the empty patch. A gap in the trees, the grass stamped down to nothing. The leaning tangle of an old wire fence. A scrap piece of corrugated tin roof.

He feels suddenly cold, all over.

“Billy, come on,” Max says.

“I’m…” he says. “I think I’m lost.”

She scoffs. “Are you kidding? The pool is like, two minutes from here. Let’s just get back on the road.”

He looks at her and then back at the…absence of a place. It gnaws at him. “I thought there was something else here.”

“Let’s just go, Billy. There’s nothing there.”

There _should_ be, though. He puts his hand on the door latch and Max grabs him by the shoulder.

“ _Don’t_.”

The sun is going down. There are shadows on the ground with nothing to cast them; something that skitters, in the corners of his eyes.

“There’s nothing there.”

He doesn’t believe her. 

“Billy,” she says again, more urgently. “There’s nothing there.”

*** 

“You ever been surfing?” he asks, spread out on the bonnet of his car, the metal so warm against his skin it should hurt. The air tastes like gunpowder. What time are the fireworks, again? He wants to ask. But he forgets the answer every time. It’s not important.

“Nah,” Harrington says. “No beaches in Hawkins.”

Billy almost rolls his eyes. There could be. Harrington has a limited imagination.

“We could go to Cali?” he asks, not looking at him, looking at the first scatter of stars where they start just above the haze of sunset. “When all this—when I’m done with school. I’ll take you and Max somewhere we can go to the beach every day.”

“You just want to see me in a bikini,” Harrington says.

“Is that _less_ degrading than your scoops suit?”

“Depends what you do to me in it,” Harrington says, eyes mischievous, rolling the words out around a breath of smoke.

“No,” Billy says, suddenly sick with upset. “He wouldn’t say it like that.”

And when he turns to look again, Harrington is looking up at the stars, smiling. Was never smoking at all. 

Billy reaches out to tuck just a little bit of his hair behind his ear, just to make him perfect.

“What are we waiting for, again?” Harrington asks.

“Fireworks.”

“Oh yeah. I told the others to meet us here. They should be here soon.”

“What time did you tell them it starts?”

“Who cares?” Harrington says. “I like having you all to myself.”

“Do you?” Billy asks. “You’re not bored here?”

Harrington’s eyes sparkle. “With you? Relax, man. Lie back and look at some stars with me.” He slips his hand alongside Billy’s until Billy relents, lets him tangle their fingers together, pulling until Billy’s lying down next to him, looking up at the stars in the sky. There are too many of them. “Now, say something romantic,” Harrington says, squeezing.

“I’m not good at that,” Billy says, licking his dry lips and counting. There are definitely way too many of them. “I’m not good. At anything.”

He can feel Harrington rolling his eyes. “I’m sure there’s something.”

He thinks about it.

“You ever been surfing?”

*** 

“I never thought I’d find a way out from all the monsters. I never thought I could just be happy,” Harrington says, looking at him with his big lamb eyes. Billy’s in love with him. Billy’s happy too. 

They undress each other in the dark. Touch mouths. Harrington is too rough and too hungry and Billy doesn’t mind disappearing inside him. 

“What’s this?” Harrington says after, tucked in along his side like a girl, like he didn’t just nail Billy so hard into his bed it had him crying. His fingers stroke over his arm, coming away dark and wet.

“Don’t worry about it, princess,” Billy says, pressing their lips back together, kissing his eyes shut. “You’re dreaming. ”

***

Hawkins. It’s a warm night and promising. There’s a phone booth, somewhere, with the light on, like something he can only remember if he tries real hard.

Tonight, he’s forgotten.

It feels like he’s on the edge of the world, the engine purring, the steering wheel solid and real in his hands. He could go anywhere. He could follow the long string of lights out of town, drive until he hits the coast. He’ll never need to stop for gas.

He turns around. 

*** 

_What do you want, Billy?_

It hurts right up until it doesn’t.

***

It’s a fresh night—cold and clean. Billy’s tired. He’s been driving all night. And longer. But it doesn’t matter, not anymore. The lights are on in the Byers house, like he knew they would be.

He closes his eyes and when he opens them, he’s home. 

He gets out of the car. Leans on the door, smiling.

“Am I dreaming or is that you, Harrington?”

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr @harringroveheart](https://harringroveheart.tumblr.com/post/186113487707/run-he-thinks-billy-thinks-in-the-parking-lot)   
> 


End file.
